This Week In Sales: The Dissidia Of Duodecim

Period:The week of February 28th – March 6thThe game analyses your music, then generates patterns in sync to the beats with complexity to reflect the rhythm. (2011)

Top-seller:Dissidia 012[duodecim]: Final Fantasy – 286,117

Nintendo 3DS sales: 209,623 | Total sales: 584,387

The Dissidia of Duodecim:

The week of February 28th – March 6th saw the release of what one assumed would be a significant game: Dissidia 012[duodecim]: Final Fantasy, the sequel (or chronological prequel) to 2008’s Dissidia: Final Fantasy on the PSP. Unfortunately, the game didn’t make quite as big a splash as one would have hoped.

Dissidia 012 debuted with 286,117 units sold in its first week on the Japanese market — not a bad number by any means, but a far cry from the 489,126 unit debut of its predecessor, which is disappointing given that Dissidia 012 appears to be the richer game. One possible reason for this is competition; Dissidia 012’s release was immediately after that of Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity and the Nintendo 3DS launch.

Nintendo 3DS Week 2:

The Nintendo 3DS is now at a total of 584,387 units sold by its second week in Japan. Nintendo have stated that they believe inbuilt 3DS software such as the Augmented Reality games will be a significant factor in driving people to buy the system early on through word of mouth, and this could very well be the case, although it’s simply too early to make any sort of judgement regarding the 3DS launch.

Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle maintained its position as the best-selling piece of 3DS software at 178,728 units by its second week . Nintendo’s only retail 3DS game, Nintendogs + cats is still in second place as far as 3DS software goes with 108,912 copies sold so far across all three versions of the game. Other 3DS releases such as Samurai Warriors: Chronicles and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition can be found below in the top-20 chart.

The top-20 software sales chart for the week is as follows:

Lw

Tw

Title

Weekly Sales

Total Sales

Sys.

Publisher

New

01.

Dissidia 012[duodecim]: Final Fantasy

286,117

New

PSP

Square Enix

New

02.

Way of the Samurai 4

70,380

New

PS3

Spike

03.

03.

Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle

59,138

178,728

3DS

Level 5

02.

04.

SD Gundam G Generation World

45,989

238,969

PSP

Namco Bandai

05.

05.

Nintendogs + cats (all three versions)

44,699

108,912

3DS

Nintendo

01.

06.

Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity

43,302

248,955

PSP

Sega

New

07.

Digimon Story: Super Xros Wars Red/Blue

35,752

New

DS

Namco Bandai

06.

08.

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles

30,112

79,438

3DS

Tecmo Koei

09.

09.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd

26,210

4,351,882

PSP

Capcom

New

10.

Star Driver: Takuto’s Radiance – Legend of the Most Handsome Boy in the Galaxy

Yep Digimon World 3 has been so far the best Digimon game i’ve played, this one, digimon rumble and digimon card battle xD, i got so addicted with those games.

….i dunno, it was weird with digimon 3, the battles were crappy, but the world, atmosphere, colors, theme, sprites, card battles, digimons following you, everything just made the game strangely addictive xD

Ren

Same thing for me bro. I remeber camping on my cousin PS1 with an English to Portuguese dictionary while we tried to beat that game. Great memories… I think that was my second RPG after Pokemon. Sadly, none of the DS games feels like that one. Could never get into them.

While I like Dissidia, whoever is better at turtling is the better player. If you take two really good Dissidia players, the battle turns out to be one person turtling and the other person trying to fake the person either into blocking or attacking. The reason for this is that all HP attacks are ridiculously easy to dodge and all brave attacks are blockable.

It’s a great game but it’s very flawed. I personally think they could make some alterations on the blocking system. If you block it has you sitting there for the amount of block time, but after the character is done blocking, if the character does not block, then they should have a two second blocking penalty. This will stop people from just throwing up random blocks in hopes that the person does a brave attack, and ontop of that, if the person does throw a random block when you dash in and evade out, you don’t have a fourth of a second to hit them with a brave attack if you wanted to use a brave attack to break them instead of just hit them with an HP attack.

While I’m pretty sure Dissidia 012 didn’t fix the block problem, adding assists may make it easier to fake a person who continues to turtle the entire match.

Code

Definitely agree with you on this one, there just not enough penalty for playing a defense heavy game and the mechanics generally favor it. I’m kind of hoping that maybe like they said, they’ll try a different approach for Dissidia’s next sequel, I think something more traditional might be a little easier to manage. I still enjoy the game though regardless generally I’m only playing with friends any ways, and if there turtling I can kick them in the face >w<'

I’ve read the same, but c’mon, it’s SE after all. Dissidia is one of their only recent franchises that has sold well and is critically acclaimed. They’ll find a way to milk it, and they know we would like (at the very least) more characters in the future.
Or… perhaps they make a 100% rpg Dissidia, with a focus on decent stoyline.

They have, however, in another interview I read a couple weeks ago, said they were open to putting Dissidia on console systems.

doomspeller10

A PS3 version would be more than welcome, but I imagine it’d be easier for them to make a version for the 3DS.

doomspeller10

Well they kinda fixed the issue. Not all brave attacks are THAT blockable right now, and those brv attacks that make you stagger when blocked have been increased in number. The time for retaliation when blocking successfully is shorter if I’m not wrong, and the damage of critical attacks (such as those of counters) has been reduced from 5x to 2x. Some HP attacks were enhanced so now they’re not as easy to dodge as before, such as Kuja’s seraphic star, Squall’s aerial circle, Cloud’s Cross Slash, etc. They pull you in now so you just can’t dodge and counter them (I main Sephiroth so I noticed that really quickly).
And there’s the assist bar, which is only charged by attacking, and if you don’t attack for a while, it gets depleted. Since many characters got their DC combos nerfed you have to build combos out of assistance (and that’s for landing HP attacks as well). I don’t know how Exdeath mainers will play now.
AND if you play against somebody that still manages to turtle, equip “snooze and lose” or “concentration” (or both if you can afford the CP).

Aoshi00

So I guess almost everyone bought a 3DS just for Layton.. that’s the killer app for me too..

I wonder how you actually play that thing. Do we need to solve puzzles to investigate and then play courtroom cases or it’s a new gameplay altogether? I hope it’s fully voiced, voiced Gyakuten Saiban was always one of my dreams, the japanese trailers are enough of a tease.

If you have to choose characters at the beginning of the game (meaning it may be divided in 2 stories’s perspectives), i will go down with phoenix all the way first xD, i love that dude haha.

Ren

Me too, I actually don’t like playing Layton and didn’t really care about it until I watched the film with a Layton afficionado friend of mine. I like the stories and characters, but the gameplay just doesn’t cut for me. Altough watching my friend bawling like a girl after the second game’s ending might have tided me a bit before the film, of course, watching him start crying in the middle of class was really amuzing too. The Phoenix Wright is enough already to tide me in, like my main course, Layton is just a bonus, a dessert.

malek86

“Altough watching my friend bawling like a girl after the second game’s ending might have tided me a bit before the film, of course, watching him start crying in the middle of class was really amuzing too.”

Wha?

Ren

@ malek86
Our electrotechnic teacher didn’t really care what we did on the classroom, so he was playing his DS. Then, he suddenly put his DS away and start crying in the middle of the class. He was the kind of guy who’s stoic and hates to show his feelings, so the game ending had to be really good to make him cry. It was strange, but he done stanger before, my school just wasn’t a normal one.

Just reading what you answered lol, i cried with the 3rd game so bad… and i already knew he was done for the 4th game wich made me sadder.

And the ending of the 3rd game is the definition of EPIC, completely represented by the last case

Aoshi00

I’m a fan of both series, but personally I don’t really like crossover, they seem a little jarring to me.. should be big though since both series are hot. I’m just starting Gyakuten Kenji 2 now, the graphics is really nice, and the soundtrack is better than the first game too.

Ren

Do you think GK2 it’s going to feel more like the Gyakuten Saiban games or does it have the same feel as the first? I liked the first, but I never completed it since it felt very different from a GS game and felt very strange and disconecting.

Aoshi00

I just started and haven’t finished the first case yet, so far it’s interesting and I could never get enough of the old cast (it has Tanaka Tarou, I think in Eng it’s Shelly de killer right?). Hm.. I guess it still feels like the first Investigation game, I like the new music and the artwork seems even better.. I liked the first one okay, just thought it wasn’t as exciting w/o the actual courtroom battles and the last case dragged on for too long, otherwise I liked all Phoenix/Apollo/Edgeworth games so far. I think the chars in the 2nd one should be more interesting. The LE Orchestra soundtrack is totally worth it :) I can’t wait to see the female judge.

Ahh, but all in all, they are really making me carve for another traditional Ace Attorney game… i don’t mind if they take out Phoenix Wright as the MC (Actually, i do mind, but is already too late now) but i want to play a new Ace attorney game already rather than an investigation one xD, still, it doesnt means i dont want to get this game

Aoshi00

I think a lot of fans are crying for Phoenix to come back in GS5, so he might have a more important role.. Phoenix >>>> Apollo :) Investigation is okay.. not as good as the trilogy, but I love the old chars, who were all gone in Apollo Justice.

PrinceHeir

glad to Dissidia Duodecim doing great in sales :)

Tokyo Guy

I posted some comments about the 3DS launch here in a different article but as a summary, the console isn’t exactly in-demand, to say the least. The most telling sign is that major electronics stores in Tokyo have it in stock (heck, even Amazon Japan is restocking this week) and that the used game stores are selling the console UNDER retail price.

It should be noted that for consoles and major/hard to find releases, the used stores will often jack up the second hand price by 30%+ of the original retail price. The fact that one of the larger chains is selling the 3DS for 24,500 yen is simply put, shocking, as is the fact that they have 3 of each color in stock and not going anywhere.

Realistically there are 2 probably explanations for the rather “apathetic” situation:

1. There are no games that people “must have”. I said this before when Siliconera posted an article about the launch games, and someone even went as far as saying “When was the last time an action game was a smash-hit” or something like that, and yet lo and behold my point was dead on. Just look at the sales ratio between consoles and software.

2. The hardware issues: poor battery and high price. (And I might also throw in revolting design but that’s perhaps not so influential when there is no alternative).

It’s important to note that when the original DS released, it wasn’t such a run-away success. It was only when the DS Lite came out that the mass hysteria for the portable began to occur. To this end, it’s probable that sales of the 3DS won’t skyrocket until (A) more games release, or (B) the hardware revision is released.

On a side note, the comparatively horrid sales of Nintendogs is a perfect reflection of the situation: the only people who have purchased the 3DS are early adopters/gamers. The unprecedented popularity of the original Nintendogs was indeed spurred on by mainstream customers and the often mentioned “non-gamer”.

malek86

“It’s important to note that when the original DS released, it wasn’t such a run-away success. It was only when the DS Lite came out that the mass hysteria for the portable began to occur. To this end, it’s probable that sales of the 3DS won’t skyrocket until (A) more games release, or (B) the hardware revision is released.”

But the DS wasn’t exactly benefitting from the initial skepticism around it, and it took word of mouth to spread it among the non-gamers. On the other hand, the 3DS is coming off the superb success of the DS, so it should have had an easier start.

That said, yes, I think sales will increase a lot with the next revisions… and a slightly lower price point. Or perhaps some new colors.

malek86

3DS sales seem ok, but I’m more interested in seeing how it will track after 5-6 weeks, after the early adopters dry up. It might still be above the PSP. Or, considering the high price, it might even be below.

Speaking about the PSP, great performance, even in face of the 3DS launching it still won’t go down.

Dissidia sales are decent, but much lower than the predecessor. Disgaea 4 is not showing legs (as typical for this kind of game), that’s why it would have been better if it opened a little higher. A bunch of 3DS games with legs, but that’s obvious, since there isn’t much else to buy for the console right now.

Also, just how long can MHP3 hold in there? DQ9 is almost done for.

Oni123

Looks like they’re doing the same thing in the UK =O dissidia and 3DS are out on the same day.